UPDATE 1-Brazil president under fire for Petrobras Texas refinery deal

BRASILIA, March 25 (Reuters) - Opposition legislators asked
Brazil's top prosecutor on Tuesday to investigate President
Dilma Rousseff's role in the purchase of a Texas refinery by
Brazil's state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA
which critics say was way overpriced.

Rousseff, who chaired the company's board at the time, said
last week her approval of the 2006 purchase was based on a
"flawed" and "incomplete" executive summary.

Mounting criticism of the deal puts her in a difficult
position by providing her opponents with ammunition to attack
her reputation as a good administrator just six months before
she seeks reelection to a second term.

A group of lawmakers led by Senator Randolfe Rodrigues of
the socialist PSOL party asked Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot
to investigate whether Rousseff lied about the refinery deal.

Federal police are already probing the Pasadena, Texas
refinery purchase. Investigators at Brazil's TCU audit court
have questioned the value Petrobras paid for the asset, which
processes about 100,000 barrels of crude a day, including the
heavy crude that dominates Petrobras output.

Petrobras, as the company is known, paid $360 million to buy
50 percent of Pasadena Refining System Inc in 2006 from
Belgium's Astra Oil NV, more than eight times what Astra paid
for the whole refinery a year earlier. The price rose to $1.18
billion in 2012 after a dispute between Astra and Petrobras led
to Petrobras' buyout of Astra's stake.

Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo said the call for a
new probe added no new facts and was clearly an attempt to make
political hay out of the case by focusing on the president.
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